NVIDIA on the defense

As you have all probably seen by now, an
internal sales document from NVIDIA was leaked to the public. This particular
document was the propaganda equivalent of 101 reasons to not like ST Micro’s
Kyro II part. From our recent review of the Kyro
II you’ll realize that we positioned it not as a cost effective competitor
to the GeForce2 MX, but rather an alternative to the more expensive GeForce2
Ultra or GeForce3. While the Kyro II clearly doesn’t boast the same feature
set as the GeForce3, it is a good card to have in the interim between now and
the point where DX8 titles start using the potential of the GeForce3 core.

On the sales side of things, NVIDIA views the Kyro II as a direct and obviously
more attractive competitor to the GeForce2 MX. It was because of this threat
to their previously untouched value line of cards that NVIDIA made the decision
to put together this sales document. The majority of the document was intent
on presenting the Kryo II as an unreliable, borderline dangerous solution for
any of NVIDIA’s customers to offer. Unfortunately for NVIDIA, many of the arguments
NVIDIA made in the document were grossly exaggerated. While the Kyro II does
have its issues (we’ll get to those in a second), they are not nearly as devastating
as NVIDIA had made them out to be. However we all know that NVIDIA is one of
the most competitive companies in the sector currently, and we shouldn’t have
expected any less of them, especially when threatened so quickly by nothing
more than a value priced graphics accelerator from the creators of the Power
VR.

The shock over the document in the community was expectedly great, but there
is one thing that you have to take into account. Hundreds of similar documents
have come and gone from other manufacturers in the industry, it’s a part of
their marketing in such a highly competitive sector. Imagine the uproar that
would be generated had the internal marketing documents of AMD, Intel or even
3dfx been revealed. While we all accused NVIDIA of taking statements about
the Kyro II out of context (which they did), aren’t we partially guilty for
taking NVIDIA’s marketing documents out of their context? We all know better
than to believe the information that was presented as fact in the document,
after all, it was a sales tool and how many of us really believe the sales pitches
we’re given so often in our lives? Yet we were seemingly shocked to see it.
This isn’t to justify it; it’s simply a different perspective. Just something
to think about, I’m more than certain a lot of companies out there have some
internal documents that would look utterly disgusting if they ever surfaced.

Quite possibly the best to come out of all of this was the fact that ST Micro
did not respond to the document; a very mature move on their part. Unfortunately
some harm may have come from the incident (I don’t believe for one minute that
any of the recipients of the document blindly accepted it as fact) in that Guillemot,
the parent company of Hercules, made some pretty bold statements about how threatened
NVIDIA should feel by the Kyro II:

"They are right to be scared, 3D Prophet 4500 will really be a great
product.” - Claude Guillemot, President, Hercules Technologies.

While we should all commend Mr. Guillemot for his statement, don’t expect Guillemot
to exactly be on NVIDIA’s good side after this. NVIDIA is much like Intel was
in 1998, with relatively low competition on a performance basis, and the ability
to command quite a bit of power from those that depend on their chips. Let’s
hope that Guillemot hasn’t burned any major bridges, but with them being the
only ones pushing Kyro II so much now it’s difficult to see how they haven’t
caused a little sizzle.